What a story. We have travelled all the way down the East coast, which is around 2,600km, in a campervan that only worked properly for the first 300km or so. So much to tell and so little time to write it! I'll be updating this space when I can.

At the moment our heavy priority is to sell the beast, which we nicknamed "Sheila", frequently yelling "Sheila will get us there!" on long drives with no mechanic for several hundred kilometres (followed by inanely searching for wood to touch). We have been told that Sydney is a great place to sell, as demand is much higher than in the north, in Cairns where we bought.

I'll start the story off. We buy the car, everything seems fine. I gave it a thorough visual check over: electrics, lights, air con, wheels, tyres etc. which all worked and was in good order. There was a bit of rust, but that's to be expected on a car that age I thought. What I didn't realise was that there was a crack on the underside of the radiator, and hence no water in there. This essentially makes the engine overheat when in use, which severly mucks it up!

So, it gets us about 300km down the road, towards a town unimaginatively called Townsville. Townsville is a name that will forever stick poignant in my mind for the 8 dull days full of nothingness we spent there, waiting for our camper to have a new engine fitted. Yes, that was the extent of the damage. "Oh yeh mate, you need a new engine, it's completely f**ked" said the mechanic after trying to get her started for about 45 minutes as we croaked up outside his garage in the middle of an industrial estate 3km from the town. One our journey down from Cairns, the lack of water in the radiator failed to cool the engine, which hence overheated, and blew a head casket - apparently a tricky thing to repair. All we needed to have done was check the water before we left. Oh yeh, it also didn't have any oil in the engine either. Good times. The mechanics were nice guys though, and we don't think they ripped us off - it did cost us $2100 for a new engine, radiator, and a weeks labour, and they gave us a lift to town, explaining that a taxi would cost us a fortune! Nice guys, terrible luck.

Bad? It gets worse. And worse. One of the things Townsville is famous for is sunshine. Not so bad, apart from the only week we spend there it is overcast, and we're there in jellyfish season, so don't swim, unless you want to get eaten by crocs, stung by deadly jellyfish, or munched by a shark. Naturally, we gave the dip a miss, and simply spent our time walking around the bay and harbour. Lul. I became ill to, a feberal infection, which antibiotics soon put to rest. Oh, and because of the repairs, we were desperately calling banks, and hasitly withdrawing what remained of our funds.

After 8 long days in Townsville, and me averaging around 12 hours sleep a day to get rid of my illness, we recieved the all clear from Trevor, our Aussi mechanic. "Oh yeh it's been a nightmare; I've been chopping bits out, welding things in, rewiring. I'm just glad to have finished the bloody thing!". We had a 1995 engine fitted, which has a slightly different format engine than the '92. This spelled disaster and he did spend 5 days longer than he expected. We rocked up at his garage, and with a long draw of breath paid him $2100 for the repairs; a fair rate according to the cab driver. He took me out in it and explained that the accelerator pedal was loosing power if you held it down, but he was sure the problem would clear itself up and it was just something sticky on the carburettor. Essentially, the engine would make the car shudder violently if you held the accelerator pedal down, or went up a hill. Then the whole thing would lose power and you have to pull over and wait for 10 minutes or so before going again.

We got 24km away from Townsville that aftenoon before breaking down. This was initially caused by the shuddering, then a flat battery from starting the engine too frequently and keeping the hazard lights on with the engine off as we forced Sheila up the road towards a "Servie", Oz slang for service station. Little did we know, it was just dirt passing through our 2nd hand engine, and all we needed to do was replace the fuel filter, and put some special cleaning fluid through the petrol injection system. A nice yokel stopped to have a look and told us as much.

We waited 2 nights in that service station over Anzac weekend, thinking we wouldn't see a mechanic until tuesday, as it was a bank holiday. I told you it went from bad to worse - de Guatamala a Guatapeor as the Spanish say. After the first night, on sunday aftenoon, I tried starting it just for a laugh, thinking the battery was stone cold flat, and guess what, it started perfectly. Ridiculous. There wasn't an ounce of life in it 40 hours before that! We drove it around the local area for an hour or so and the problem seemed to be dieing away. We decided to leave our great escape until the following day, giving it a bit more of a run the next morning to double check Sheila wasn't messing us around. On monday morning it worked even better, so we set off at 60km/h towards Airlie Beach, not fully expecting to get there without breaking down again.

We didn't get there, and only just (luckily) made it to Bowen, where we stopped and camped the night at a park near the beach. Phew, slowly making it down the east coast. We spoke to several different guys about the problems we were having, and all suggested the same thing; clean the fuel system! We bought the spare part and cleaner from an autocentre the following day, installed them, and set off once again, this time, for Rockhampton, a mere 525km away. He says we wouldn't get to Rockhampton, he says. We did! Great success. What's more, we didn't have any problems along the way. Yes, I stayed at 80km/h, fearing the return of issues if I overworked the engine, but it felt awesome to finally get on the road again after so long!

Next we hit Hervey Bay, just 320km. I pretty much drove all day for 4 or 5 days. Good times. Never have I driven so much in my life! It would have been boring, if the aftenoon sun hadn't been shining long golden rays across the lush, green, undulating landscape, full of emerald eucalyptus forests.

It's a long road south from Cairns to Sydney. Google maps makes it just over 2,600km. Along this incredibly long road we were desperate to see some Australian wildlife, knowing as we do from the legend that was Stevey Irwin the kind of critters they have lurking around the scrub. Unfortunately it remains that the only alive kangaroos we have seen were in Rockhampton zoo, having seen 7 large, fly infested, dead ones rotting by the side of the road on our way south. "Skippy!!!" we shouted in our best Australian accents as we passed them. Such a shame. (We also saw dead wombats, possoms and a dingo- they need to sort out their road kill!).

We had a sketchy time in Port Macquarie, the one stop before Sydney, as I was waiting on money to be returned to my account from Paypal, and had been borrowing off Stu, who was in turn borrowing off his parents. Essentially, we ran out of money, and needed to spend around $100 that day, for petrol and supplies. How did we do it? Empty bank accounts, no cash, vehicle stranded in the middle of a town. Well, we sat and thought for a while, and then realised that we had US dollars in our bags. We found the only place in town that would exchange them to AUD, NAB the national bank of Australia, which gave us about $100AUD at a shocking rate and after a conversion fee.

It's looking like we won't have enough time to hit New Zealand, as the car still hasn't sold, as of monday 10th, and I'm leaving Sydney for Fiji on the 18th. I'll have to go there some other time, as annoying as it is to be so close!

Since Townsville the weather has been amazing, with perfect blue skies a daily occurrence. On the way into Sydney, I joked to Stuart that it never rains here. Incidentally, it hasn't. The first day we went into the city the warming sunset shone across the harbour, illuminating the Bridge and Opera House in an orange glow. My camera had run out of battery and I was killing myself that I couldn't record the experience. Luckily, this epic display was not a one off; infact, every single evening has been the same - meteological perfection.

P.S. Australia has some ridiculous place names, essentially, all the ones it hasn't borrowed from the UK. For example, Uluru, Wooloomooloo, Dululu. The list continues...